@FOURSIDE_BOY While I agree that his business decision making is not that good, Fish does not need the support of every single gamer. Not even close. He's made it clear he has no plans to support Nintendo platforms already, and even if he did I doubt enough fans are fanatical enough to care about what he said to drive him out of business.

@FORSIDE_BOY I like Nintendo. But I'm regularly critical of Nintendo hardware.

I don't see how anyone who was thinking rationally about this could see Fish's comments as anything more than strongly-worded opinions. Deal with it. Move on. Not everyone has to share your opinion about stuff, Nintendo fans.

@WiiWareWave Generally speaking the most effective marketing these days are social - generating word of mouth or viral marketing.

Neither of these methods rely on "advertising." Instead, what you get is the media writing about your product, the social networks going on about it an so on. The advertising looks after itself to a degree then - the media writes about you it's free publicity.

@Devil_Surivior You're right. While we're at it, I reckon Stephen Hawking is a complete blithering idiot. Never mind that I know almost nothing about physics. I just don't like the guy.

I am of course being sarcastic, but in this instance it was the best way to demonstrate a point. You are not an expert in game development just because you play games, and if your only response to Fish is you hate him because he said mean things about Nintendo, then frankly you're validating his opinion more than your own.

@TBD - I have little patience for people being being abusive and rude towards proven industry experts, whether they agree with them or not. That is my opinion and I've every right to point out that Fish knows what he's talking about despite the abusive commentary from the fanboys in this thread, for the same reason that you've let a swarm of them in to question his credibility.

If people were civil in disagreeing with him, or went out and tried to disprove his claims (and in this instance that wouldn't take much work at all), then that would be another matter. That would be constructive debate then, and that's healthy.

I don't even like Fish on a personal level - I like Japanese games. I didn't even enjoy Fez, but the dude has proven enough that he's entitled to be taken seriously as an opinion within the games industry. Rather than call him names, let's try and figure out why he said what he said, and then argue with it from there in a respectful manner.

@sweetiepiejonus - my point was that random people on internet forums whose only contribution to the games industry is throwing money at retailers and commenting on forums are not in any position to criticise people who have won awards for game design and produced even one massively popular game.

As I said - meritocracy. In an ideal world the only people that would be out there calling people donkeys would be the people who have the proof that they know more about stuff than the people they're calling a donkey.

@sweetiepiejonus Fish has contributed a game that has been critiacally lauded by just about everyone. He works in the games industry and while his opinions are controversial he has earned the right to have an opinion.

And on top of that, whether you agree with him or not he has earned the right to have his opinion taken seriously. He's proven he backs up what he says.

The sooner the games industry becomes a meritocracy, where successful developers and publishers are given the respect they're due while random people who haven't contributed anything to the industry are told to put up or shut up, the better.

@WiiLovePeace Nintendo wasn't responsible for advertising the EB World Expo. But because it took the most prominent part of the floor, every single person that attended that event (and I have no idea of exact numbers but it was tens of thousands over three days) would have had Wii U exposure, and the chance to play it.

Nintendo didn't need to "advertise" the experience stores because they were sitting right there. In the middle of major shopping malls with thousands of people walking by each day. That is the advertising. How silly would it be to advertise the advertisement?

The idea behind Nintendo's marketing strategy was to get people to play the console, and then generate positive word of mouth. It's a far more effective marketing strategy than throwing millions at a TV advertising campaign in the hope that it impresses people with something that's remarkably hard to visualise.

Do you understand the purpose of TV advertising? How it fits into a broader marketing strategy? Why a company should spend money on TV advertising? How small the TV advertising budget is as a percentage, even of companies like Coca Cola that are constantly advertising on TV?

TV Advertising is the tip of a very large marketing iceberg. And just like an iceberg, the bit that you need to care about is not the bit you see.

Once again - can you prove that Nintendo would be in a better position with the Wii U if it embarked on a TV advertising campaign. You need to answer all the questions I've outlined above.

@WiiLovePeace Nintendo had the largest display in the most prominent position at the EB World Expo last year. That would have cost a fortune. It then went and set up pop-up 'shops, in prominent locations throughout the major cities in Australia, so people could play the console which again would have cost a lot.

Nintendo understood that the best way to market the Wii U is to get people to play it, and it picked the opportunities to get the largest and most responsive audiences to play the console.

Now. Since you're all about supporting evidence, your turn - prove a TV advertising campaign would benefit the Wii U.

@theblackdragon I hoped that with all the information available on the internet that the overwhelming majority of people (as in 99.999%) would understand the basic rule that monopoly = bad, competition = good.

The Vita doing well benefits the 3DS. That in turn benefits even the most diehard Nintendo fan.

@ThomasBW84 actually in Ashes 2009 you could play full test matches too.

The one thing I wish for is licensed player names. The last game licensed the English and the Aussie teams, but the rest were piss-poor fake names. C'mon, this is modern consoles. Licenses are essential.

@DePapier So. Feminism is equally critical of various male stereotypes. Such as the fantasy of "being the prince", which is a form of male power fantasy - the prince in fairy tales is essentially a "super hero" and as such reinforces some very basic values of masculinity that objectify men within specific characteristics of "perfection."

One of the sure-fire ways to realise that a person who hasn't actually studied feminism is trying to argue for or against feminism is this: they assume feminism is either "women's rights" or exclusively critical of how women and portrayed in society and media. Bother are fundamentally incorrect.

Genuine feminist theory is concerned with both how men and women are objectified and used to reinforce primitive understanding of male and female roles within social. Social equality is never going to happen as long as men are expected to have 12-pack abs and are able to lift their womens like a dumbbell weight.

@AyatollaofRock What is "reality"? It's a simpleton's view of explaining things that he/ she doesn't really understand, and can't explain with a concrete argument. Once you look at something academically then the deeper issues around a subject tend to come out, and then hey presto! we get to enlightenment.

I'm not saying you're a simpleton, but the gaming community in general views feminism in a way not dissimilar to the way people a couple hundred years ago thought the world was flat and evolution wasn't a thing. That was "reality" until people started thinking "hang on, there's more to it than that."

Princess Peach in a Mario game is literally objectified - she is the reward at the end of the eight world. Samus is symbolically objectified - the only time we see that she's a woman in the first game is when she's stripped down to a bikini. No context to it either. She's half naked because you played well.

Is it a conscious attempt by the developers to objectify women and reinforce negative gender balance? Of course not. But stuff that goes on in art isn't always conscious design decisions - read up on "Authorial Intent": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorial_intent

I used to have similarly limited views on the role of gender in the arts, but then I read some books, took some courses in philosophy and engaged in some debates. I realised it isn't as simple as I had thought.

So read the damn books and get learned up before you try and dismiss the work that academics are doing to debate gender tropes in games. You may well still disagree, and that's healthy - robust and constructive debate is the way society will actually get better. But you're going to have to do better than "It's reality" if you want to be taken seriously.

I completely agree with TBD - this should really be something the developers and publishers are pushing.

There are signs it's happening - I really liked the way Mass Effect handled it, but we've got a long way to go before Japanese developers, especially, understand why it's important that they understand that women should be more than delicate prizes to rescue or sexy lolitas with inhuman assets.

Regarding Sarkeesian, while her video isn't exceptional by documentary standards, it does something very valuable:

It's got a large group of teenage boys (and, sadly, adult men) running around throwing a tantrum online because they don't understand how representations of gender in media work, they don't understand symbolism, and they don't understand gender politics. It has them citing games like Metroid and Dead or Alive as wholesome representations of women in video games. The fact there are so many of them is a brilliant (if frustrating) way of proving that the games industry is a very, very long way away from being able to stand up and say it stands for gender balance in gaming.

In other words, Sarkeesian has done something quite brilliant in demonstrating that there is a lot of education around feminism (from a social studies point of view) that needs to happen yet. In the film industry or in literature people are able to have these kinds of discussions from an adult and academic point of view. In gaming? lolno.

While I'm not surprised to see the canned 'third party is lazy' commentary, to those people - unless you are a console game developer or publisher you're not actually in any position to comment on whether they are lazy.

If most third parties choose not to develop on Nintendo's platform, then the problem is actually Nintendo.

Also, as a side note, if 'everyone who wants a 3DS has one' just a couple of years into the 3DS' life span, then Nintendo is in deep, deep trouble. Nintendo needs to keep finding new fans for this console for a solid three years yet. And there is no reason that it can't continue to dominate the charts. Look at the PSP - still going strong after like eight years.

@TrueWiiMaster Throughout history what is "common sense" to the layperson is simply common sense because they don't know better.

It was common sense that the earth was flat. It was common sense that witches weilded magic powers and would float if thrown into a lake. It was common sense that the earth was the centre of the universe. It was common sense that black people should be slaves, that women should not vote, that communism is a bad thing.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of entire books written about gender roles in entertainment. These don't always agree - there is a lot of debate happening in academia around the theories that these books present to readers.

And here you are telling me that your opinion should be taken seriously compared to all that literature and debate because it's 'common sense' to you? I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no reason for me to debate the topic with someone who themselves admits to not actually knowing anything about the topic.

I suggest you buy a couple of these books and do some reading. I can all-but guarantee you'll find what you think of as "common sense" challenged in a positive manner.

@TrueWiiMaster How much feminist social theory have you done? Do you understand the broader issues at play here? Do you understand how symbolism works, as opposed to direct meaning? Do you understand concepts of subconscious design - where a person's in-built attitudes and worldview will often unintentionally work their way into a creative project?

I suspect I know the answer to all of these, since you seem to think the problem here is exclusively "the way the character looks," and you seem to think that being able to copy and paste gender into games (or films, books, whatever) is the definition of equality.

It's not. Feminist equality never intended for women to be treated exactly the same as men. It argues that women should not be disadvantaged compared to men. There's a world of difference.

But there's little point having this argument as I'm certain your knowledge of feminism is limited to "internet research," and you have no formal knowledege of sociology.

So to continue your metaphor; if every other driver on the road has never done a driving course, is it really your fault for driving on the "wrong" side of the road, when the rules say it's actually the right side of the road? No. The problem lies with all the other drivers who don't listen to the guy who actually knows what he's talking about.

@TrueWiiMaster 1) films are relevant because sexism is a social issue that transcends games.

2) Simply 'changing' the gender of characters doesn't resolve the issue of sexism. As I mentioned above the issue is the way characters are portrayed, not whether they are male or female. The applies equally to both heroes and villains.

Anyone who doesn't think feminist theory is still important to analyzing games, films and the social environment these exist within should take a look at some of the comments in here. It's clear that a large percentage of people still, simply, do not get it.

@Void Unless you've played every game and seen every film I don't think you're in a position to comment about how often females are cast as the primary villain of a game or film.

You're actually more-or-less correct, for the record. But what you missed is that the fact that there are so few female primary villains is precisely because the entertainment industries are still fundamentally sexist.

Women can't be the main bad "guy" because women are physically inferior to men - that is quite literally what it boils down to. The only time a woman can be dangerous is if she is incredibly sexy and able to use that as a weapon against the menfolks.

This is literally ancient history. From the Succubus of Christian mythology to every other ancient religion having a version of the Succubus (say, the Siren), the only time evil women have power is when it involves seducing men.

This is not something we need to replicate in modern art and games. The problem is that villains almost always represent primal fears that we humans have. Male primary villains tend to be physically or mentally elite because we as humans fear those who are superior to us - they have mental and physical abilities beyond our understanding and so it triggers the primal flight response in us.

What we as male human beings fear in women is not their physical poweress, but their sexuality, which does hold power over our core emotions. And so the only EASY way to make a female villain threatening is to make them sexy. Which, again, triggers our flight response.

As long as males continue to dominate these industries, male ideas of what is and isn't threatening will also continue to dominate. There is nothing good that can happen by having female villains in that context.

Or to tl;dr this, it is not coincidence that the only female villain in the games industry worth any real respect, GlaDOS, is a character that was written by a woman.

For the record, even when it comes to villains women are portrayed as inferior to men. The man is the hulking ultimate boss, while the women are always subservient, weak, but evilly cunning and use sex as a weapon.

Feminism has a long way to go before society will grow the heck up. Stuff like this is only doing good for the world.

I realise that you know that most of what you've written there has little to no direct influence over a temporary share price rise, but then it shouldn't have been mentioned. Other people are going to walk away after reading this and assume that there's a correlation, when there isn't :-/